More people are living alone than ever. In America, forty percent or more of all households contain a single occupant. Many people happily live alone—but others are tormented by the wail of the Lonesome Blues. That oldie can echo in our ears even when we’re surrounded by friends and family.

Loneliness is a common brand of human suffering. Many believe that loneliness is an inescapable fact of human existence, a curse we’re fated to endure from birth to death. The novelist Thomas Wolfe spoke to this idea: “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

Wolfe was famous and admired during his lifetime, which apparently offered little solace or good company for his loneliness. Even “super-famous” Albert Einstein succumbed to the misery. “It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely,” he candidly commented. Being a rich celebrity doesn’t appear to help: “Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool,” observed the actress Liv Ullmann.

Loneliness appears to have infiltrated if not occupied human nature. Impervious to the exhilarations of fame, wealth, and power, it produces assorted misery, ill health, and increased risk of heart disease. [Read more…]

The evidence suggests that we unconsciously indulge in feeling unloved.

Though it’s mostly unconscious, many people have a strange affinity for feeling rejected, abandoned, and unloved. Yes, this idea flies in the face of common sense. Who would want to bear the pain of feeling unloved any more than what life might force upon us?

Our psyche is an inner realm that, like the outer cosmos, doesn’t always adhere to the etiquette of common sense. If we’re willing to investigate all the nooks and crannies of our psyche, we come across some startling truths that defy common sense.

Our affinity for feeling unloved is one of these truths. Feeling unloved is familiar to many of us. We can easily get used to that feeling. Sometimes it even defines us. We won’t know ourselves or recognize ourselves without this old hurt. We can easily identify with ourselves as victims of rejection and other forms of cruelty or unfairness inflicted upon us.

In fact, there is evidence that we can even begin to indulge in these negative feelings. Sometimes the feeling arises in the familiarity of bittersweet self-pity. We can’t climb out of the pits of “poor little me.” It’s as if we’re determined to be loyal to our suffering self or don’t know any other way of being. We drag ourselves down into unhappiness, depression, and ill health when we cling to this false (yet emotionally powerful) impression of who we are. [Read more…]

MOST OF OUR SUFFERING IS avoidable. Our emotional and behavioral problems can be resolved. We just have to understand how our psyche works. This website is dedicated to teaching vital psychological knowledge.
Do you need help to curb drinking or to get off drugs? Are you facing a divorce or a career failure? Are you anxious, depressed, or overwhelmed by life's challenges? Perhaps you're simply unable to get your mind or intelligence into high gear.
I can help. I'm Peter Michaelson, an author and psychotherapist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I teach people how to overcome unconscious programming that produces suffering and self-defeat.

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My book, Why We Suffer--A Western Way to Understand and Let Go of Unhappiness, is the amazing story of what mainstream psychology has failed to teach the world. Read the reviews and buy the e-book for $7.97 at Amazon.com.